


A More Perfect World Than the Universe

by lexwing



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Ghosts, Gen, I blame Mark Hamill, Not Canon Compliant, Off Screen Death, hope springs and all that, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 10:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13005861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexwing/pseuds/lexwing
Summary: Luke reflects on the personal tragedies of the past, and discovers new possibilities for the future.





	1. Ch. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke reflects on the mistakes of the past.

 A More Perfect World Than the Universe

 

Revised note: Not canon compliant.  In fact, I was avoiding spoilers like mad before I saw the movie on opening day.  So no spoilers ahoy until Ch2.  This is just something that grew from the backstory Mark Hamill says he came up with to help explain Luke’s state of mind at the start of TLJ.  It’s a tragic tale, and I think I may have just made it worse.  Follow up chapter just added because I needed it this am, damnit.

 

 

_Luke is here._

Sometimes, when the winds on Ach-to blew just right and the waves crumpled hard against the grey stone beaches, Luke would swear he still could hear the whispers.

_Luke is here._

_Skywalker’s here._

It wasn’t the Jedi way to turn away from pain. 

So when he heard the voices he would face into the wind until it made his eyes sting. 

 

* * *

Memory was an odd thing.

There were many events in his life Luke would have preferred not to have experienced, if he’d been given a choice. 

The murders of his aunt and uncle.  Losing his hand. Losing more friends than he could count, starting with Ben on the Death Star and Biggs at Yavin and dozens and dozens more spiraling down through the years.

Now he was on the shady side of fifty, most of those losses were numbed a bit with time.  Sometimes it even gave him pleasure to remember.

He remembered how Biggs had used to mess up his hair affectionately when the other boys had teased Luke and called him “Wormy.”  “Never mind them, Luke,” the older boy had always counseled wisely.  “Only idiots call people names.  That’s baby stuff for babies.  You and me are cooler than that, right?”

He remembered how Beru had always set aside a glass of bantha milk for Luke to drink after his chores, even when he was much too old for her to be fussing over him so, even when Luke would have vastly preferred a cup of the bitter, tannic tea his uncle always drank or, better yet, something stronger.

There were other memories, however, that still caused him pain.

 _She_ was one of them.

 

* * *

They had been happy, so happy, for such a comparatively short amount of time.

He didn’t even like to think of her by name, now.  That made her too real.

 

* * *

Dante had been Luke’s son, too, even if Luke had had nothing to do with the boy’s initial creation.

Barely able to walk when Luke had met his mother, Dante had spent the short years of his life calling Luke “Father.” 

That they had shared no blood connection hadn’t mattered to anyone, least of all to Luke.

Dark-haired, with an ability to charm everyone he met, Dante had been wildly exuberant.  He’d been quick to love, quick to anger, but just as quick to forgive.  He’d been a handful, and the great joy of his parents’ lives.

Until he was gone.

 

* * *

Luke hadn’t been at home when it had happened.  He’d arrived only to find the small crowd of neighbors standing there, waiting for him, looking at him with expressions of sadness and pity.

“Luke is here,” “Skywalker’s here,” they had whispered, parting like the sea and falling back before the front door.

 

* * *

It hadn’t been the same after that. 

They had tried.

They had both tried.

But how can you forgive someone when they cannot forgive themselves?

 

* * *

Luke returned to the Jedi a few months later.

She hadn’t tried to stop him.  She had never been easy with his decision to step back from the Jedi.  This made it easier for both of them.  There was less to explain.

He had left, and she hadn’t stopped him.

 

* * *

At the temple on Yavin the quiet, the focus, the distance from the cares of the world had soothed his wounds, had begun to heal them. 

He had kept telling himself it was for the best.  That she was better off without him, and that he was better off without the constant reminder of her and of the child they had lost. 

Only his dreams betrayed him.  Only in dreams did he allow himself to remember the sounds of their laughter, the softness of her red hair against his cheek.

No one brought up her name, not even Leia. 

He didn’t know if she ever officially ended the marriage or not.  She didn’t contact him, even though she knew where he’d gone.  So perhaps she had not. 

It didn’t matter.  He only wanted her to be happy.

 

* * *

Some days it was as if it had all been a distant dream.

Three years after he returned to the temple, the Jedi fell.

Again.  And, Luke suspected, for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: Her name’s not Mara Jade. But I gave her red hair as a tribute. So there.  
> “Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives back life to those who no longer exist.” -- Guy de Maupassant


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Force ghosts are good at keeping secrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: spoilers for TLJ in this chapter, and then we veer even further off cannon. You have been warned.

_Out of darkness, hope is born._

 

* * *

 

Being a Force Ghost didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.

Luke knew it was the way of all things, and he’d been ready—more than ready—to move on to the next phase of existence.

Jedi did not die, not really: nothing did.  It just changed.

 _He_ just changed.

 

* * *

 

Manifesting took a remarkable amount of energy at first.

Ben Kenobi and Yoda had made it look so _easy_.

“Don’t blame yourself, Luke,” Ben told him once Luke had finally been able to reach out and connect with him in the Force.

Ben looked the same.  Perhaps better rested than he had the last time Luke had seen him, at Vader’s funeral. 

Kenobi sat on the edge of a large boulder, his hands folded in his lap, his beard neatly combed.

Luke had no idea where they were.  Everywhere and nowhere, he supposed.

“I had years of study and meditation on Tatooine, communing with my old master, to prepare myself for this transition,” Force ghost Ben told him.  “As with so many other things, you were left to forge your own path. I am sorry for that.”

“Why did I never hear from you again, all those years?”  Luke asked curiously.  “I’m not angry, but I did wonder…”

“As I said, you needed to forge your own path.  For you, and for the Jedi.  I could not interfere.  And I doubt I would have been helpful if I had.”

Luke smiled wryly.  How odd to think he could still smile. 

He was one with the Force. Days, weeks would pass without Luke being aware of anything except the great flow of energy that surrounded and bound him.

Yet, if he chose to be, he could also still be himself.  Mechanical hand and all.

“It’s not the path you would have taken, Ben,” Luke admitted.

“Likely not.  You’re not me.  I’m not you.  However, that doesn’t mean how things turned out is wrong.  The light side is rising again.  Whether or not those who wield it, who honor it, choose to call themselves ‘Jedi’ or to follow the old ways is really neither here nor there.”

Luke nodded.  “I agree.”  He smiled again, thinking of Rey.  Whatever she chose to be, it would be extraordinary.

They sat silently together for a long moment, the two old Jedi masters.

“I missed you, Ben.”

Kenobi smiled.  “I missed you, too, dear boy.”

 

* * *

 

“Master Yoda, I can commune with you, and with Master Kenobi,” Luke asked one day while the three Force ghosts were standing together on a green field.

The planet they were on had no humanoid inhabitants.  Gundarks grazed on the lush grasses around them, and the sky was a bright, cool blue. 

The planet was too small and resource-poor to be of interest to the First Order, and too far on the Outer Rim to attract speculators.

It was alive with the Force, and it was beautiful.

“I have met other Jedi,” Luke continued.  “Yet…”

“Looking for your father, you are,” Yoda interrupted him.

“Has he gone on?  To whatever comes…after this?”  Jedi teachings on the afterlife had been frustratingly vague.  Luke had always had the sense that becoming one with the Force was just the first step in a longer process.

Perhaps, given enough time, one was simply absorbed into the Force all together.

Yoda and Kenobi shared a glance full of meaning.

“Busy, your father has been,” Yoda said.

“Busy?  With what?”

“Anakin gave himself a mission many years ago,” Ben explained. 

“Restless even in death, he was,” Yoda added.

Luke was not entirely surprised to hear this.  Vader had certainly not been someone who had been content to follow the rules.  Although Luke had never really had a chance to know Anakin Skywalker, he suspected his father had been much the same.

“What sort of mission?” he asked.

Ben and Yoda shared that glance again.

“What are you two not telling me?”  Luke queried. He paused as a troubling idea formed.  “This doesn’t involve Kylo Ren, does it?”

“In a manner of speaking, it does,” Ben said softly.  “The situation is…complex.”

“Worship Vader, Ren did.  Worship Anakin Skywalker, he does not.”  Yoda had squeezed his eyes closed, listening to the soft lowing of the cattle in the distance.   “Reach him, Anakin cannot.”

“Then where is he?  Masters, if we can truly go everywhere, see everything, where would he have gone?”

Ben looked expectantly at Yoda. 

The small green creature did not open his eyes, but tipped his face slightly in Luke’s direction.

“With your daughter, he is.”

Luke frowned.

“With my what, now?”

 

* * *

 

Tama had spent eighteen years avoiding trouble. 

Not that there had been much trouble to get into on the series of small, backwater planets she had grown up on.

So it really shouldn’t have surprised her that today, of all days, trouble found her.

She had no idea why the First Order has chosen to attack the transport station on Sirius Prime. 

There had been rumors flying for weeks, about the fall of the Resistance, about some battle on Crait, about Luke Skywalker, but no one seemed to really know what, exactly, had happened. 

Stories, that’s all they were, she thought as she was jostled hard by an oversized Devonian.  Passengers of every species rushed by, all desperately trying to find a way to escape.

The halls of the station were crammed with people running to and fro. Outside First Order fighters were strafing the surface of the station.  So far they had not landed any troopers, but it was only a matter of time.

There was no way she was going to reach her originally scheduled transport to Dac.  Not now.

Outside the large glass windows she could see a few ships successfully making the jump to lightspeed.

At least the Ties weren’t firing on civilian vessels. 

_Not yet._

“I know,” she mumbled under her breath.

_Hurry._

“I know,” she said again through gritted teeth as an elegant couple in furs momentarily knocked her off balance as they squeezed past in the crowds. 

The woman took one look at Tama’s dull green clothes, sniffed, and turned away.  The man had the courtesy to mumble an apology she could barely hear over the warning klaxons.

Tama saw an opening in the crowd, and seized it, glancing only briefly at the marquee that declared the docking bay transport’s destination. 

“Coruscant.  Works for me.”

But something pulled her up short.  A warning, deep inside her.  Something, instinct, perhaps, made her quickly look to her left and check the next bay’s signage.

“Corellia?”

_Yes.  That one._

Tama had never understood the split-second impulses she sometimes had, the thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere.  But she’d learned long ago to heed them.

“OK, Corellia it is.”

She slung her bag closer under her arm and made her way toward the gangplank of the rusty old vessel.  It looked flyable, but only just.

“We’re full,” a burly man held out his arm to her.  “We can’t take anyone else.”

She glanced around him and into the dim interior, filled with frightened, disheveled people who stared back warily at her.  Further along she could see a few stretchers, all of them occupied.  She could smell the coppery stench of blood from where she stood.

“You want to take me with you.  I have medical training.”

The man scoffed, but not unkindly.  “Kid, I don’t have time for this…”

“I may be a kid, but I can set bones and stitch wounds.  I’m supposed to be on my way to Dac to start my formal training.  I think I can be of more use to you now, don’t you agree?”

“Posey, we’ve got a window for takeoff—what’s the hold up?”  An older woman with copper colored skin came to stand next to him.  She eyed Tama warily. 

“Beat it, kid, half the people on here already won’t be able to pay their freight and I ain’t taking any more.  This ain’t a humanitarian mission.”

“She says she had medical training, Captain,” Posey told her.

“I do,” Tama repeated.  “And the First Order will be here any second.  You want me with you.  Trust me.”

Tama didn’t know why, but people tended to listen to her when she spoke in a careful, measured tone.  It was the same tone she’d heard her mother use hundreds of times with frightened patients.

After a long moment the captain blinked.  “Fine.  Tend to the injured and we’ll get you to Corellia.  Assuming we don’t get blown out the sky first.”

“Thank you,” Tama said with genuine relief as she tossed in her bag and climbed up after it.  “You won’t be sorry, I promise.”

The shuttle had just cleared the docking bay doors when an explosion, a much larger one than before, rocked the station.

Tama and the other passengers rushed to the viewport. 

A First Order troop transport had blown a hole where the entrance to the next docking bay had been.  Stormtroopers poured from it like sand.  Tama could see the sparks of blaster fire lighting the interior of the crippled station.

“Those poor bastards aren’t going anywhere now,” a toothless old woman next to her muttered.  “We got lucky.”

“Yes,” Tama agreed as the stars around them began to stretch, indicating their own ship had begun the jump to lightspeed. 

“We got lucky,” she echoed.

 

 

 

Shall I continue?  Let me know!


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he was alive, Anakin was never one to admit when he was in over his head. He certainly was not about to admit it now that he was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: I admit that at this point I am continuing this story just so Force Ghost Luke can meet Force Ghost Anakin. I love awkward family reunions.

Anakin never intended to become any sort of a presence in his granddaughter’s life, really he hadn’t.

He had stayed away from Luke and Leia, and away from Leia’s family, specifically because he didn’t see what he could possibly contribute to their lives. 

How could he even have begun to make amends, after everything that had happened?  Particularly to Leia, the daughter he’d never seen with his own eyes, the daughter he’d…

Better to just remain within the Force, where all was peace and where he wasn’t reminded of all of his mistakes, of all he’d lost and of all he’d learned at such a terrible cost.

He had sensed when his grandson had been born.  The boy was strong in the Force.  According to Yoda and Obi-Wan, he grew to be reckless and headstrong.

Anakin had not failed to notice that the ghosts of both Jedi masters had looked directly at Anakin when they had said this.

He had wanted to approach the boy, to reach out to him.  However, Leia and Luke had not told Ben Solo who his grandfather had been.  Anakin felt he had to honor their choice.

It was the least he owed his children.

 

* * *

 

With Tama, it was different. 

She had been born much later than Ben.  The girl’s mother and Luke were already separated (Anakin wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, other than that his son was deeply unhappy about it).  The child lived on the distant edge of the Outer Rim Territories while her mother served in the New Republic’s medical corps, delivering health care to a series of developing worlds.

The infant had been able to sense his presence almost from birth, but no one else in the room could. 

“A Jedi, this child will not be,” Yoda had already pronounced, though not unkindly.  “Her own path in the Force, forge she will.”

So what was the harm in visiting from time to time, and standing over her cradle to make sure she was safe and well cared for?

She had Padmé’s eyes.  They were blue, like Luke’s, not brown, but they were still Padmé’s.

 

* * *

 

 

As Tama grew from infant to toddler, Anakin was careful to appear only on the edges of spaces and across rooms from her.  Sometimes the child smiled and waved a small hand at him, as if recognizing his presence. 

The adults around her wrote off this behavior as some childish fancy, and no one was the wiser.

 

* * *

 

 

When she had been three years old, Tama had spoken to him for the first time.  Anakin, in a moment of weakness, had answered her.

The child’s mother had been on the other side of the planet dealing with some sort of mining disaster.  The indigenous species, humanoids called the Venkata, were affectionate parents who had large families, so they had placed Tama in one of their communal crèches until her mother returned.  The other children were all sound asleep in their beds, their gray, snout-like noses whistling softly at they dreamed.

But Tama had been crying.  And when she had looked right at him Anakin could no longer bear it.

“Don’t cry,” he had counseled, trying to use his most authoritative voice, the one he’d used on Ahsoka when he’d needed to get her attention.  “Your mother will be back soon.  There’s no need to cry.”

It had dawned on him at that point that he knew next to nothing about children this young.  Or children at all, really.  But the little girl had sniffled, wiped at her tears with her fists, and blinked up at him.

“I’m Tama Osan.  What’s your name?”  She had asked.

Any self-respecting Force ghost would have faded from view at this point, he had been sure of it.  He’d known he was being selfish and unwise.  Yet he’d still smiled at her.

“When I was your age, my mother called me ‘Ani,’” he had told her.  “You may call me that, if you’d like.”

Tama had smiled at him then.  If he had still had a living heart, it would have snapped in two. 

She had Padmé’s smile as well as her eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

As she got older, he appeared to her less and less, even when she asked for him, cried for him.

Eventually he was only a vague, pleasant memory to her, something left behind in childhood.  Her imaginary friend, Ani.

That didn’t mean he stopped looking after her, particularly after Ben fell to the darkness, and the Force bled from his actions.

Anakin found it maddening.  Staying away from his grandson had not prevented his fall.

He would not allow this one to fall as well.

 

* * *

 

 

Tama helped carry the last stretcher down from the shuttle bay.  They had made it to Coronet City without incident.  The capital city was swarming with ships diverted due to the First Order’s attack, and it was chaos on the ground.  The Corellian Security Forces had their hands full, but they seemed to be handling the sudden influx of refugees with aplomb. 

Her job done, she started making her way back through the crowd, dodging harried port authorities and clouds of exhaust from ships of nearly every make and model she’d ever read about.  The rusty vessel that had given her a lift off Sirius Prime was on the far edge. The captain was standing on the loading ramp, hands on her hips.  She was deep in conversation with a brown-haired young man not much older than Tama.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Captain, but I just wanted to thank you again for the lift,” Tama told her.  “I’m just going to grab my gear.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed and she looked sharply at the young man next to her.  “She’s the one I was telling you about,” she said to him. 

She turned back to face Tama.  “We haven’t been properly introduced.  I’m Chandra.  This is Barrett.  He’s crew on that freighter over there, the _Red Runner_.  He says his captain was injured during the evacuation and he is looking for a medic.  Maybe you can help him out?”

Tama smiled politely at the young man.  “Well, since we’re safe on Corellia now you probably want a real doctor.  Lucky for you there’s an entire medical corps right over there.  I’m sure they can help.” 

His hair kept falling in his eyes so she couldn’t quite read his expression.  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he admitted.

Tama nodded and edged her way past them back into the now-empty ship.  She felt around in the near darkness until she found her rucksack, tossed among the opened med-pacs and other detritus.  She was reaching down to get it when she felt a sharp electrical crack whip up her spine.  Her ears rang and her vision went black. 

The last thing she remembered was her head smacking into the metal decking beneath her as she fell.

 

* * *

 

Anakin had often wondered, over the decades, what he might say to his only son when next they met. 

Something parental. 

Something wise.

 

* * *

 

“This isn’t as bad as it looks,” he told the Force ghost of Luke Skywalker when he abruptly appeared in the hold of the _Red Runner_.

“It _looks_ like she’s unconscious and handcuffed,” his son retorted.  His shimmering form quickly kneeled down next to the young woman’s head.  “What happened?”

“She’s just been stunned—she’s breathing fine,” Anakin said encouragingly.  "How did you know…?”

“Yoda and Obi-Wan told me.  When I wanted to know where _you_ were.”  Luke didn’t look up as he spoke.  Force ghosts could not make tangible contact with anything on the physical plane.  Luke’s hand thus hovered just above the girl’s red-gold hair.

“You might have said something,” Luke said, almost in passing.  “You, of all people.”

“When, exactly?  I stayed away from you and your sister because I wanted to make things easier for both of you.  I didn’t want to be a reminder of all you’d lost.  I wanted the past to stay dead.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Luke said quietly as he stood and turned to face his father.

Anakin regarded his son’s ghost sharply.  Luke had obviously been well into middle age when he had passed.  But he spoke with the weariness of someone ten times older. 

“And take it from me: there is no such thing as a ‘good’ time to tell someone he has a child he never knew about,” Anakin admitted.

“Hmm.”

“There’s also no ‘good’ time to tell a child that you’re its father,” Anakin hinted.

“Perhaps.  But there are spectacularly bad ones.”

“You’re bringing up Bespin?  Now?  Really?”  Anakin shook his head.  “All right: in retrospect, I admit: not the best timing.  But I was trying to get the better of you before you got yourself killed.”

“Ironic, considering you were the one trying to kill me at the time.”

“Capture you, not kill you.”  Anakin allowed his mouth to quirk slightly with amusement.  “You were a good fighter, Luke, even then.  But, trust me, if I’d actually been trying to kill you, you would have known.”

“In any event, it doesn’t matter now.  I’m not going to tell her anything about me.”

Anakin frowned.  “You’re not?  Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to make sure she was all right.  And she isn’t, at the moment.”

“I have it under control.”

“Why does that statement not fill me with confidence?”

“Luke, I realize you may find this hard to believe.  But I was rather good at this sort of thing, once.”

“So you have a plan?”

“I do.  Once she’s awake…”

“’Once she’s awake’ what?”  Came a voice from behind them.

They turned to find Tama sitting up, her eyes screwed shut in pain.

One eye opened, and then the other.  She blinked at the two Force ghosts in front of her.

“Ani?”  She blinked rapidly.  “Wow, I must have hit my head a lot harder than I thought if I’m seeing you again.” 

She squinted at Skywalker.

“Who’re you?”  She demanded.

“She can see us?”  Luke asked his father.

“Apparently so,” Anakin said after a long moment.

“Could she see you before?”

“Not since she was very young, no.”

“Ok, who are you two, really, and what the hell is going on?”  Tama demanded. 

For the first time she looked down and noticed the cuffs on her wrists.  She held them out indignantly.  “And why am I handcuffed?”

Luke and Anakin exchanged a long look of concern.

“This,” Anakin at last admitted, “may require a new plan.”

 

 

 

 


	4. Ch. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens as Tama learns more about her situation. Force Ghost Anakin and Force Ghost Luke discover they have very different parenting styles. This is a long one, folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: All knowledge about galactic medicine and other factoids herein were gleaned from reading EU books years ago and watching the Clone Wars cartoon. Thus errors are entirely my own. If you’re Disney, don’t bother suing: I don’t own anything anyway.

 

_“This may require a new plan.”_

  That was the last thing Tama’s imaginary childhood friend, Ani, said before vanishing from view once again.  The vision of the other man—older, this one, with a heavy beard and sad eyes—disappeared along with him.

   The scraping sound of the metal door to her prison being unlocked, she suspected, had frightened them away.

   Wait, why would someone imaginary be frightened of anything?

   “What the kriffing hell?!?”  Tama staggered to her feet. 

   It was harder to do than she expected.  Her head was throbbing and she was off-balance.  The cuffs on her wrists didn’t help, either.

   She was in the hold of a large ship.  There were plastic shipping crates, and the smell of oil.  The metal under her feet hummed a bit, indicating the ship was moving.

   She was able to steady herself against a few of the crates in time to see the door open and the brown-haired young man she’d briefly met on Corellia—that morning?  Yesterday?  How much time had passed?—enter.

   He immediately held out both hands to show they were empty. 

   “I just want to talk to you.”

   Tama grabbed the first thing she could find in her cuffed hands and hurdled it at him.  It was only a wrench, but her aim was good.  If he hadn’t swatted it down it would have smacked him in the face.

   “Hey!”  He yelled.  “I said I just wanted to talk!”

   “I don’t care!”  She yelled back, even though it made her headache worse. 

   Another tool flew at him, narrowly missing his head.

   “You _stunned_ me,” Tama told him with all the loathing she felt.

   He cocked his head to one side. 

   “Actually, that wasn’t me: that was Chandra.  I was in favor of trying to reason with you.  Obviously _that_ would have worked out well.”

  “Sarcasm?”  An outraged Tama told him.  “You don’t get to be sarcastic here.  I’m the one who’s been kidnapped!  I’m the one with the possible head injury and hallu…” 

   She caught herself just in time.  He certainly did not need to know about Ani suddenly reappearing. 

   “I refuse to be kidnapped.  Do you hear me, Baron or Barton or whatever your name was?  I refuse.”

   He smiled slightly. 

   “It’s Barrett, actually.”  His too-long bangs had fallen back in his eyes.  “And this isn’t a kidnapping, not really.  Chandra and I were serious about needing your help.  Once you’ve done that we’ll drop you wherever you want to go, and you can be on your way.  No harm, no foul.”

   “Oh, like I’d help either of you now,” Tama hissed.

   “We’re not the ones who need help.”  The young man’s expression grew cloudy.  “We’ve got an injured man on board.  He needs medical assistance.”

   “From someone who hasn’t even been trained yet?  When there was a whole fleet of medical personnel right there on Coronet City who could have helped?  That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

   “I was watching you, you know.”

   “Oh, _that’s_ not creepy at all.”

   “No, I mean, I was watching you help with those patients.  You know what you’re doing.  Chandra said you patched those evacuees right up.”

   Tama thought for a moment.  This was getting nowhere.  Time for a new strategy.

   She took a deep breath and held out her hands.  “Take off the cuffs.  Then, maybe, maybe, I’ll think about helping your friend.  Maybe.”

   “Uh uh.”  When she scoffed at his refusal, he raised his eyebrows.  “No, really, I don’t have the keys.  Chandra does.”

   “Convenient.”

   “Isn’t it, though?” 

   He shifted to one side and gestured to the open door.  “Just come with me and take a look at him.  I promise you, no one will lay a hand on you.  We’re not bad people, really.  We’re just in a jam, and you can help get us out of it.  If you want to.”

   “See, that’s maybe where this conversation should have started,” she told him.  “ _Before_ the stunning.”

   “Noted.” 

   Without any other plan or options, Tama decided to take the risk.  She sidled past him, careful not to get too close to him.

   Outside the room was an empty passageway.  A metal wall ladder at the end led upwards to another deck.  Definitely a freighter of some kind.

   He held out a hand.  “After you.”

   It took only a few steps to reach the ladder, and in that time, Tama failed to come up with a brilliant plan of escape.

   “Barsky?”  Barrett hollered up the hole.

   “Yeah?”  Another voice, definitely human.  Definitely male.  Older.

   “We’re coming up,” Barrett told him.

   Tama waited for Barrett to remove the cuffs so she could climb.  When he just looked at her expectantly, she rolled her eyes and grabbed the lowest rung. 

   She had only climbed a few rungs when she realized Barrett was right behind her.  Or, more accurately, under her.

   “You stay down there until I’m all the way up,” she demanded.

   “Why?  You’re wearing pants.”

   “That doesn’t matter!”

   “Seriously?  Don’t flatter yourself.”

   “I’m dead serious.  Get off the ladder or I don’t move.” 

   Tama knew next to nothing about guys, but she wanted to make sure this one knew exactly where he stood.  Which was ideally nowhere near her.

   He huffed with frustration. 

   “Fine,” he said, dropping back down to the deck.

   No sooner did her head and shoulders emerge onto the upper deck than a large hand—but not an unkind one—grabbed her under the arm and deposited her on the level surface.  She yelped in alarm at the sudden movement.

   “Hiya,” the big man said.  Wear and grime heavily creased his face but he almost smiled at her.  Almost.

   “Barsky, I presume?”  She asked.

   “Yep,” was all he said.

   Barrett had already scrambled up after her.  He directed her through another door and into a much larger, wider passageway.

   Tama stopped short at the sight of a monstrous face spray painted on the metal wall.  Fierce, curving horns framed an elongated animal skull.  Even without flesh, it was frightening.

   “That’s a mythobeast,” she said quietly.

   “Yes, it is,” Barrett said.  He sounded proud.  “Like it?”

   She turned to look at him.  “You’re Mandalorians?”

   “Some of us are.  Some of us aren’t.  I am, and Ven is.  He’s the one I’m taking you to see.   Come on.”

   Tama had never met any Mandalorians.  She had met very few people in her life generally. 

   However, if she had been asked to pick which planetary group she would have _least_ wanted as her kidnappers, Mandalorians would have probably been in the top five.  Maybe even top three.

   The bright side, in as much as there was any bright side to being abducted, was that as far as she knew Mandalorians had no history of enslaving people, or of trading them on to someone who might. 

   The woman who’d helped get Tama off the transit station and had then stunned her emerged from an open doorway at the end of the passage.

   “Took you two long enough,” Chandra said.

   “We had to have a discussion first,” Barrett told her, gently propelling Tama towards the older woman.

   “I won’t say it’s nice to see you again,” Tama told her coldly.

   “Yeah, save it.”  Chandra gestured to large room behind her, clearly the captain’s quarters.  “Just see if you can do anything for him.”

   Inside Tama took a second to get her bearings. 

   The room was spacious by freighter standards, longer than it was wide and with a seating area at one end.  In the end where they stood was a bed, and on the bed was a man.  Tama didn’t need more than a glance at him to see his breathing was shallow and his color bad.

   Another painting of a mythobeast skull, this one yellow instead of white, adorned one wall.  There was carpet on the floor and several small pieces of furniture had been hastily shoved to one side.  A pitcher of Endorian orchids had fallen over, dripping water and little black rocks all over floor.

   Half-open medpacks were tossed haphazardly everywhere, and the stench of bacta was strong.

   Tama’s eyes returned to the man in the bed.  He was middle aged, with tanned skin and the build of someone who had worked hard all his life.  Not fat, but strong.  His shirt was open.  An angry red wound ran across his belly, from just above his right hip to just under the left side of his ribcage.

   “That’s blaster fire,” she observed.

   “Yes,” Barrett admitted.

   “He wouldn’t have gotten a wound like that evacuating Sirius Prime,” she observed.  “That comes from close quarters combat.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “What happened, really?”  She demanded.

   Barrett and Chandra exchanged a look.

   “I can’t help your friend if I don’t know all the details,” Tama cautioned.

   Chandra shook her dark-haired head.  “It’s blaster fire, and it happened three days ago.  That’s all you need to know.”

   Tama sighed.  “Fine.  Uncuff me.” 

   Once Chandra did so Tama sat down carefully on the edge of the bed.  The patient didn’t even stir.  That was not a good sign.

   Tama found a tube of disinfecting gel and quickly scrubbed her hands with it.

   “ _Listen, and watch_ ,” her mother had always explained to her when they went to visit a new patient.  “ _See what the symptoms want to tell you.  Half of being a good doctor is observation_.”

   “Ok.  Blaster fire,” she thought aloud.  “Well, blaster wounds self-cauterize.  You can see some healing has already started.  Shock might help explain why he is still unconscious.  Has he been awake at all?”

   “Only for a few minutes at a time,” Barrett said.  He was now sitting at the foot of the bed, regarding the older man with what looked to Tama like genuine concern.  “And he was out of his head then.”

   “Babbling,” Chandra clarified.  “We couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was saying.”  She took the patient’s hand in hers, and suddenly the situation made a bit more sense to Tama.   At least it helped explain why such a hyper-masculine room would have orchids it in. 

   There was clearly a lot more to Ven and Chandra’s relationship than merely that of two captains.

   “I want you both to wait outside,” Tama told them gently.  “I need to examine him, and I need to think.”

   Chandra dropped Ven’s hand and opened her mouth to protest, but Barrett shot her a warning look.

   “Right,” he said hastily.  “Sure.  We’ll be right outside if you need us.”  He hustled the older woman out of the room.

   “Finally, some peace and quiet,” Tama said aloud once they were gone.  “Now, let’s get down to work.”

* * *

 

   “We should have gone with her,” the ghost of Luke Skywalker observed to the ghost of his father.  “We shouldn’t have left her alone.”

   “She wasn’t alone.  Just because she couldn’t see us didn’t mean we weren’t there.  We couldn’t risk her giving away to that boy that she could see us.  I already hate him, by the way.”

   Luke regarded the roguish smile on the ghost’s face and shook his head. 

   He had no idea why his father looked so _young_.  It was distracting, to say the least.  Although Luke supposed Anakin could look like whatever he wanted.

   Luke spared a quick glance at his mechanical hand.  He wondered abstractly if he could appear without it, with his flesh hand returned. 

   Anakin’s ghost, he couldn’t help but notice, also had a mechanical hand.  Luke had never realized that any of Anakin’s cybernetics predated his transformation into Darth Vader. 

   His father was a stranger.  So was his daughter.

   “I never should have left,” Luke said sadly.  “I should have been there for her when I was alive, when I could have actually helped her.”

   “You can still help her now,” Anakin said, a tad sharply.  “There’s no point in wishing things could have been different, Luke.  And there’s no guarantee that if you had stayed with her mother you would have actually been able to raise Tama.”

   “What does that mean?”

   “Think, Luke.  Snoke wanted you dead, for decades.  Enough that he spent years turning Ben against you.  Do you really think he would have hesitated to hurt Tama, or her mother, if he thought it would be a way to get to you?”

   “Don’t say that.”

   “It’s the truth, Luke.  If Tama had been with you, if Snoke had known she existed, it is likely she wouldn’t have lived this long.  Or worse.”

   “Worse?  What’s worse than killing a child?”

   “How many years do you think it took Snoke to turn Ben, Luke?  How long was he whispering in Ben’s ear without you and Leia being aware of it?  Think how much faster it would have been if he’d had an infant to work with.  Someone he could mold from the very beginning.”  Anakin paused, staring into the middle distance for a moment.  “It’s what I would have done.”

   For a moment, Luke was too horrified to speak.

   “You mean it’s what Vader would have done,” he finally corrected.  “You’re not Vader.”

   “Oh, but I am, Luke.”  He smiled sadly at his son.  “I know you’ve always had a hard time believing this, but Vader was not the sole creation of the Emperor.  It was my own pain, and my own anger, and my own fear that caused my fall. Your mother, Yoda, Obi-Wan: they all tried to help me and instead I turned on them.  I could have stopped it, but I didn’t.  I made a choice.  The wrong one, but a choice nonetheless.” 

   Anakin laid his hand against his chest.  “Vader is still here.  Everything I did is still here.  That is my burden to bear.  Solely mine.”   

   He smiled gently at Luke.  “Let me go to Tama.  She knows me.  She doesn’t know you, at least not yet.”

   “And how are you going to explain me?”  Luke asked.

   “Oh, I’ll think of something,” Anakin said with a grin as he faded from view.

* * *

 

   From the time she had been able to walk, Tama had followed her mother about.  At first, it had been simply out of love, and out of a child’s instinct to remain close to her only parent.

   Soon, though, she’d found her mother’s work to be genuinely interesting. 

   Her mother made people feel better.  Everyone was always glad to see her.  She held hands and soothed.  She _helped_ people.

   By the time she had been five years old Tama had decided she wanted to do the same thing.  She’d watched, and learned, and listened.  She’d read all of her mother’s medical texts and rolled bandages and made sure her mother’s emergency kit had stayed well stocked at all times.

   She hadn’t been lying on Sirius Prime when she’d claimed to have medical skills.  She did.  Up to a point. 

   However, it was in times like this she realized there was still so much she didn’t know.  And, of course, it had been on the very day she was supposed to really start learning that everything had gone sideways.

   “I wish I knew more,” Tama admitted to Ven, even though she knew full well the unconscious man likely could not hear her.

   The blaster wound was ugly, but it did seem to be healing adequately.  Chandra and Barrett has obviously used up the ship’s entire supply of bacta to treat it.

   Ven was clearly running a fever, and his pupils were constricted.  His breathing was labored, his skin was flushed and hot to the touch. 

   Everything pointed to an infection.  But Tama was damned if she could figure out the source even after a through visual examination.  It might have been something internal, but diagnosing that would have taken a scanning imager, at the very least. 

   And even if she found something, what was she supposed to do about it?  Ask Barrett to kidnap a surgical droid?

   “A surgical droid would probably be more useful to you than I am at the moment,” Tama admitted under her breath.

   Admitting momentary defeat, Tama instead focused on making Ven as comfortable as possible. 

   She found an antibody shot and painkillers in one of the medpacs and administered both.  They would at least help him rest.

   “I’ll see about getting some cool packs to help with the fever,” Tama told her patient.  “Hopefully there’s a reliable supply of clean water on board your ship.” 

   She pushed his sweat-matted hair away from his face.  “Your people obviously care about you, or you wouldn’t have made it this far,” she admitted.

   Someone had hastily balled up a grimy old leather jacket under his head as a makeshift pillow.  Tama gently removed it so his head could lay at a more natural angle and ease his breathing.

   She had just thrown the filthy thing on the floor when she heard a muffled thump as something rolled out of one of the pockets.   

   “Great,” she groaned.  “Don’t worry; whatever that was, I’ll find it,” she told her patient.

   She scrambled about on the floor for a moment until her hand made contact with a soft, balled up piece of leather.  It was as clean as the jacket it had come from was dirty.  Someone had carefully scrunched it into a tight little packet.

   As she lifted it up the covering fell away, and a small crystal, about the size of her thumbnail, dropped into her open palm.

   Her vision abruptly went black.  For a split-second she though perhaps she had been stunned again, only this time she was perfectly conscious.

   She could hear, and see, but the room around her was gone. 

   All around her was swirling energy, rippling around her body and pulling at her like the tide. 

   It was as if the stone was _singing_ to her.

   She had never been so frightened in her entire life.

* * *

 

_She saw a man, tall, lean, wielding a strange-looking saber with a black blade.  He looked back at her, not with surprise, but as if he’d been expecting to see her._

_After that, the images came almost too fast to process them._

_A horned humanoid with red and black skin._

_A women, crying out as the black blade was plunged into her back._

_A young girl with brightly colored hair._

_And always the mythobeast’s grinning skull, hanging over all of it._

* * *

 

   Tama landed with a thump on the rug.

   Suddenly she was back in her body, and back in the freighter.  Her knees were drawn up tightly against her chest as if she had fallen from a great height.

   Tama took a deep breath, trying to process what had just happened. 

   She realized she still clenched the strange stone in her closed fist.  

   She went to set it down, to wrap it back up and be done with it.

   She couldn’t. 

   There was still something there, some faint energetic hum that seemed to hold her tight within its grasp.

   As if it _wanted_ to stay with her.

   She quickly grabbed the largest, darkest rock she could find from the upturned flower arrangement, one roughly the same size and shape as the one in her hand. She wrapped it up in the piece of leather and hastily stuffed in back into Ven’s jacket.

   Panting as if she’d run from one end of the ship to the other she sat down and leaned her head back against the wall, trying to make sense of what was happening to her.

   That was where Ani found her a few moments later.

   She looked up at her imaginary childhood friend with pleading eyes.

   “Ani?  Help me.  I need help.  I think I must be losing my mind. First you come back and now..and now…” 

   She realized she was shivering. 

   Ani, his form still surrounded by the odd glow she remembered so vividly from childhood, leaned down next to her, an expression of genuine concern on his handsome face.

   Her space pirate.  Her childhood secret-keeper.  How appropriate that he would show up again here, on the day she lost her mind.

   She opened her palm to show him the strange find.

   “It’s just a rock, Ani, I know, but I swear, I would swear, it was _talking_ to me.”  She giggled queasily.

    Ani stared at it the stone for a long moment, then at her, then back at the stone.

   He peered at a spot over her head.  “Luke?”  He asked.

   “What is it?  What’s happened?”  Suddenly the other figure, the older, concerned-looking one, was back again, too.

   She groaned and closed her eyes. 

   “Oh, gods, now there are two of you,” she moaned.  “I’m hallucinating about people _and_ about talking, glowing rocks.”

   “Tama,” Ani said sternly, in a voice he had used while trying to talk her out of trouble as a small child.  “I am _not_ a hallucination.”

   “Yes, you are.  I made you up.  When I was little.”

   “I’m afraid you didn’t.  I was quite real then, and I am quite real now.”  He smiled gently down at her.  “You were so young there was just no way I could have made you understand, at the time.”

   Tama sniffled.  “What?”

   “I’m not imaginary, and you didn’t make me up.  I’m a ghost.”

    She stared at him for a long moment.

   “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”  She finally asked.  “Less like I’m going mad?  Because I have to tell you, it _really_ doesn’t.”

   “I dare say it doesn’t.” 

   The ghost sat down next to her.  His body gave off no heat, only light, yet he felt solid.  Present.  Real.  “But nevertheless it is the truth.”

   In the meantime the other ghostly figure, the one Ani had called Luke, had been staring at the rock in her hand. 

   “That’s a kyber crystal,” he announced.  “You do know what those are, don’t you?”  He asked Tama.

   “Um, yeah.  Well, I’ve read about them, but I’ve never actually seen one.” 

   She glanced over at the unconscious figure in the bed.  “Why the hell would a freighter captain have a kyber crystal?”

   “An excellent question.”  Luke glanced at Ani.  “Do you recognize it, by any chance?”

   “No.  But there’s only one black kyber crystal I have ever heard of.” 

   “Same here.”  Luke nodded down at Tama.  “Tell us what you saw.”

   “Um…um…”  She struggled to find the words.

   “Take your time,” ghost Luke urged her gently.  “We’re not going anywhere.”

   In fits and starts, she was able to explain what she had seen.  It did not make any more sense to her in the explanation than it had in her original vision. 

   However, both ghosts listened, and nodded, and seemed to understand what she was telling them.

   “Tell us more about the weapon you saw,” Ani asked when she had at last stumbled once through the entire tale.

   “I only saw it for a few seconds.”  She squeezed her eyes shut to try to focus.  “The hilt was dark grey, metallic, slanted, almost, like, angular.  It had a, um, one of those crossbar things that protects your hand.”

   “A guard,” Ani supplied.

   “Yeah.  The blade was black.  But more than black.  Blacker than black, if that makes any sense at all.  And it curved up to a point at the tip.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

   “I have, in books,” Luke said.

   “I have seen the real thing,” Ani admitted.  He nodded down at Tama’s hand. 

   “You’re holding the kyber crystal out of the Darksaber, Tama.  A truly legendary weapon, that.  Created long before my time, of course.”

   “Well, what’s it doing here, then?  And why it the crystal talking to me?  And where’s the saber?”

   “What, _now_ you’re curious?”  Ani said slyly.

   If Tama didn’t know any better she’d swear he was teasing her.  She seemed to recall he had liked to tease.

     “Look, if it’s between believing that the two of you are ghosts and this is some special long-lost weapon, or believing that I’ve gone completely insane, I’m opting to believe that maybe the two of you are telling the truth,” Tama said tartly.  “Maybe.  For now.”

   “Fair enough,” the one called Luke said.

 “It showed you those visions because it wanted you to understand what it was.”  Ani chuckled slightly.  “Beyond that, I don’t know.  But it does figure that it would turn up on a ship full of Mandalorians.  It’s got to be here somewhere,” Ani said thoughtfully. 

   He glanced over at Tama.  “You need to look for it.  Think you can get back down to the hold?”

   “Wait a moment, wait a moment,” Luke cautioned.  “We need a plan.”

   “We have a plan.  I just came up with it a moment ago.”

   “That’s not a plan.  She can’t go rummaging around the place.  For one thing, these people haven’t given her that freedom of movement, and for another, we don’t know what we’ve landed in the middle of here.  It could be dangerous for her.”

  “She has us,” Ani scoffed.

   “Yes, two ghosts who can’t actually interact with our environment enough to open a door,” Luke retorted.  “If push comes to shove, how much help do you think we’d really be?”  He shook his head.  “No, it’s too risky.  She needs to wait, and watch, and listen.  Someone somewhere will slip up soon enough.”

   “Passive intelligence gathering?  That’s your suggestion?”

   “For the moment?  Yes.  Yes, it is.”

    Tama had been watching the two ghosts quarrel in silence.

   “I like his plan better,” she now admitted, nodding in Luke’s direction.  She glanced apologetically at Ani.  “No offense.”

   “None taken.”

   Tama glanced down at the crystal in her hand. 

   “What do I do with this in the meantime?”

   “Keep it with you,” Luke said.

   “And make sure no one knows you have it.  Think you can do that?”  Ani asked.

   Tama closed her first around the stone. 

It felt warm in her grasp.

   “Yes.  That, I can do.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Ch. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Force Ghost Luke keeps an eye on his kid. Force Ghost Obi-Wan gets tired of sitting on the sidelines. Rey finds building a lightsaber is a lot harder than it looks.

Luke had meant what he’d told Anakin’s ghost about waiting and watching being the wisest path.

That had not, however, stopped Anakin from dashing off somewhere as soon as the two of them had managed to get Tama calmed down. 

To see what he could discover on his own, Luke’s father had said before abruptly fading from view.

Luke could not help but notice Tama’s frown as he did so. 

Luke hadn’t yet had a chance to find out just how long Anakin’s ghost had been a presence in Tama’s life.  However, it was obvious from the way the two spoke to one another they shared a bond.

“I know I’m a stranger.  But if it’s any consolation,” he told the young woman, “until he gets back I will stay nearby.  Even if you cannot see me, know that I will be here.  All right?”

After a moment, Tama nodded. 

She was still a bit pale, and she was biting her lower lip, which Luke was coming to recognize as a sign she was upset. 

Her voice, when she spoke, was steady. 

“Ok.  Thanks.”  As she got to her feet, the kyber crystal secreted deep in one of her own pockets, she tipped her head slightly as she regarded him, blue glow and all.  “Um, may I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“You’re Luke Skywalker.  I mean, right?”  She made a sort of helpless gesture.  “I just kind of pieced that together now.  You must be.”

“I don’t know that I ‘must’ be, young Tama.  But, yes, I am.”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m usually not this slow on the uptake,” she said apologetically.  “And I didn’t know what you looked like.”

The ghost of Luke Skywalker found it amusing that his only child should be apologizing to  _him_. 

There had been holos made, of course, about Luke and the destruction of the first Death Star.  He had gone out of his way to avoid them.  From the handful of still images he’d glimpsed, he’d always been played by someone much taller and better looking than himself.  Someone who looked at lot more like Han. 

Even before he had gone into exile most people would not have recognized him if they had tripped over him.  And Luke had preferred it that way.

 “That’s ok.  You’ve been through a lot lately.”  Luke meant what he said.  If anyone knew what it was like for a teenager to suddenly have their life turned upside down, it was he. 

“So, if you were—are—a Jedi, does that mean that’s what Ani was—is, too?”

“He never told you?”

Tama shrugged.  “I was little.  I thought I’d made him up.  It never even occurred to me that he might have a history, so to speak.  A life before.  He mentioned his mother a few times…”

That genuinely surprised Luke.  “His told you about his mother?” 

Luke knew about Shmi Skywalker’s existence, of course.  Her grave had been on the farm where he’d grown up.  Owen and Beru had always spoken fondly of her.

“I don’t remember a name.  But every once in a while Ani would tell me about something his mother had done or something wise she had said.  Usually when I was mad at my own mother about something and railing against the injustice of it all.  I guess maybe he was trying to give me some perspective.”  Tama laughed a bit.  “Anyway, now I wish I had asked him more at the time.” 

She studied Luke appraisingly.  “You two know each other from before, huh?  I was listening to you two argue.  You only argue with someone like that when they are somebody you know.  So, was he a Jedi, too?”

“He was.  Before my time, but he was.”  It was the simplest explanation. 

“And there’s likely a very old Jedi artifact on board this ship.  That’s why you’re both here.  Am I right?”

Force ghost Luke was silent for a moment.

“From a certain point of view.  Yes.”

  

* * *

 

 

Luke was true to his word.  He vanished from view when Chandra and Barrett returned to the room, but he stayed near Tama. 

He watched as she showed them how to put together cooling packs to try to bring down the captain’s fever, and as she gave them instructions on how to keep him as comfortable as they could.

That seemed to satisfy Chandra for the moment.  She allowed Barrett to escort Tama from the room without any cuffs. 

Luke followed them, at a discreet distance, of course.

Barrett led Tama down the passageway and around the corner to another set of rooms.  He punched in a code to open the door and showed her in.

This room was much smaller, barely big enough for a bunk.  The metal walls were bare. 

“Sorry, I know it’s not much,” he said apologetically.  “We’ve got a crew of eight and this is the only spare room we have right now.”

“It’s fine.”

“Hey, do you want something to eat?  I can see if there’s anything in the mess…”

“No, thank you.  I’m really not hungry.  But I would like to get some sleep.”

Barrett nodded.  Her reached under the bunk and produced a pillow and two military-grade blankets.

“Pillow’s clean.  The blankets aren’t much, but they’ll keep you warm,” he told her.  “I’ll zero out the door code so you can reset it with your own.”

“Ok.”

Barrett unstrapped his chronometer from his wrist and held it out to her.

“I can’t take that,” Tama said.

“Yeah, you can.  We’ll be traveling a light speed for at least another day, and you’re going to get disoriented pretty quickly without it.”

Tama sighed.  “Ok.”  She took it and set it down on the bunk.

“Breakfast is at 0600.  You’ll probably be starving by then so I’ll come and get you.  You’ll know it’s me, ‘cause I’ll knock like this.”  He rapped his knuckles against the wall in two staccato bursts.  “Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Ok then.”  

As he turned to leave he paused to reset the keypad.  As he did so, he glanced over his shoulder.  “Thank for everything you’ve done for Ven.  I know he can’t thank you himself, but he would if he could.  He’s a good captain.  A good man.” 

For a moment, the young man looked as if he wanted to say something else.  Instead, he shrugged slightly.  “Try and get some sleep.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Uh huh.”

As soon as the young man had disappeared down the passageway, Tama hurriedly entered a new code.  The keypad flashed green, and then red as the door slid shut.

Luke had not realized Tama has been holding her breath until then.  She took a deep breath and sat down at the edge of the bunk.

“Luke?”  She whispered quietly.

He allowed himself to become visible again.  “Here.”

She looked genuinely relieved to see him again.  “Thanks.”

“I promised, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.”  She frowned, rubbing her eyes.  “What do you think?”

“Of him?” 

“Of all of them.  You must have had a lot of experience with this kind of thing.”

“With being kidnapped?  I can’t say that I have.  Happened to a friend of mine once, though.” 

Luke thought about all he had observed for a moment. 

“I think if the people on this ship meant you any real harm we would have already seen it.  I think they panicked when their friend was hurt and acted very foolishly.  But not with any real malice.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too.  I still don’t trust Chandra as far as I could throw her.  And I hate that’s guy Barrett’s stupid floppy hair.  It’s always in his eyes.  I mean, really, what is that about?” 

She leaned back on her elbows. 

“All things considered, I guess it could be a lot worse,” she admitted.

Luke smiled gently. 

“He was right about one thing: you really should try and get some rest.  Your patient might need you.”

“He’d hardly my patient,” she scoffed.  Then she sighed.  “But you’re right.”  She eyed Luke again.  “And you’ll be here?”

“Right outside the door.  The whole time.  And if I am not, Anik—Ani will be.  After all,” Force ghost Luke said with a chuckle, “he’d never forgive me if I allowed something to happen to you in his absence.”

 

* * *

 

   “Luke?”

   He looked up to see the Force ghost of Ben Kenobi standing before him.

   “Hello, Ben.”

   “Is everything all right?”

   “For the moment.  She’s asleep.” 

   Ben nodded.  He then smiled slightly. 

   “Anakin is causing quite a bit of chaos at the moment, you know.  Imagine, finding the crystal from Tarre Vizsla’s Darksaber, here of all places!  Not that it is a coincidence, of course.  Tama is likely the first Force-sensitive person who has held it in a long while. Of course it would make itself known to her.”      

   “Whatever the reason these people have it,” Luke judged, “it won’t be a good one.”

   “Likely not.  That weapon has a long and bloody history, Luke.  People have killed—and been killed—for it before.”  The ghost’s expression grew solemn. “The sooner it is away from your daughter, and she is away from it, the better.”

   “I know, Ben.  My father and I are working on it.”

   “Yes, I believe at the moment Anakin is getting quite the earful from both Yoda and Qui-Gon about it.  You know, I think Qui-Gon actually rather admired Tarre Vizsla.  I rather think Vizsla’s rebellious streak appealed to my former master.  Yoda, as you can imagine, feels quite differently.”

   Luke had to smile at the image of Anakin stuck between the two opinionated Force ghosts.

   “And, Luke?  I have some new for you.  About young Rey.”

   “Is she all right?”

   “She’s fine.  She is back on Jakku, trying to build a lightsaber since she and Kylo Ren destroyed your old one.  She’s having quite the time of it, too,” Obi-Wan chuckled.  “And, happily, there has been no more contact between the two of them, through the Force or otherwise.”

   Luke nodded.  He, Obi-Wan, and Yoda had already discussed Rey’s unusual situation at some length.  “So perhaps the bond is really broken, then.”

   “Perhaps.”

   Luke raised his eyebrows.  “You don’t think so?’

   Kenobi sighed.  “Force bonds are exceptionally rare, Luke.  I never saw one in my day, nor heard of one forming.  I always thought they were more theoretical than anything else.”

   “So did I, until Kylo Ren managed to physically manifest in a hut on Ach-To,” Luke replied tartly.

     “If it was indeed Snoke who bridged their two minds together, then it follows the Force bond died with him,” Ben said.

   Luke recognize the skeptical tone in his former master’s voice.  Sure enough, a moment later Obi-Wan continued.

   “However, I doubt it.  I have consulted several of my former teachers and they all agree: Jedi lore understood Force bonds to be generated by two individuals alone.   The idea that a third person could create one, even if the two individuals in question were willing, is unheard of.  Now I suppose it is possible that Snoke was more powerful than any Force user before him…”

   “Or it’s possible he was lying,” Luke finished the sentence for him.

   “Just so.”

   “I don’t like it, Ben.  Kylo Ren is dangerous to her.”

   “I think we should consider, dear boy, that Rey is just as dangerous to Kylo Ren.  Perhaps even more so. Just because we cannot yet see the endgame does not mean the Force does not have one.”

   “Still, she should be warned.”

   “Of course.  I will do it, if you would like.”

   Luke smiled.  “You, Ben?”

   “Why not me?  You have met her.  Yoda has met her, or at least approved of her enough to let her take your books.”

   “Humph.”  Luke growled softly. He was still a bit annoyed about that.  But not angry.  He found it impossible to be angry with Rey.

   “Why should I be left out?”  Obi-Wan continued.

   “You just want to make sure she’s doing a proper job with the lightsaber,” Luke complained good-naturedly.  “By all means, go ahead.”

   “Excellent.”

   “And Ben?”

   “Yes?”

   “You might want to try appearing to her as General Kenobi.  You know, a bit…”

   “Younger?”

   “Yes.  I think Rey may have had her fill of strange, cranky old hermits for the time being.”

  

* * *

 

 

   Sitting cross-legged by her campfire, Rey struggled again to fit the two components in her hand together.  As they had a dozen times before, they interlocked just as she had designed.

   However, when she flipped the switch, no blade sprung to life.  She knew it was not the electrical circuit causing the problem: she had already checked it and rechecked it. 

   “Kriff!” 

   For a moment, her temper got the better of her and she dropped her latest failure on the blanket beneath her.  Component parts were scattered all around her, as well as what seemed like half the contents of the Falcon and several of Luke’s old books, stones holding them open to the pages on lightsaber construction.

   Rey could not read many of the languages the books were written in: they switched between Basic and half a dozen others, often on the same page.  But the illustrations had seemed clear enough.  After all, she’d built her own sand runner and her own skiff and Force knew how many other things in her life. 

   How hard could a lightsaber possibly be?

   She dropped her chin down to her propped up knee and sighed.

   The sun had recently gone down.  A cool but not unpleasant breeze was blowing across the dunes. 

   On evenings like this, she had used to sit on top of the fallen AT-AT she had called home, daydreaming about the day her family would return for her.

   Now she didn’t need to dream about family. 

   Chewie and the Falcon were just over the ridge. 

   Chewie had insisted on accompanying her on this trip, even though she had chosen the most isolated part of the planet, miles away from Nima Outpost.

 They’d yet to see another living soul in the two days they had been on planet.  Even the porgs that had nested in the nooks and crannies of the Falcon had refused to set foot in the rough, shifting stands, choosing instead to stay safely aboard the cool vessel.

   Rey didn’t know why she thought it would be any easier to build a saber here then on the makeshift base what was left of the Resistance had slapped together.

   But she had dreamed of Jakku. So to Jakku she had come.

   She’d worked out dozens of possible configurations for her new lightsaber on the trip here. 

   All should have worked.

   None did.

   She was starting to wonder if the problem lay in the kyber crystal itself.  She and Kylo Ren had cracked it when they had destroyed Master Skywalker’s saber. 

   But she had the larger piece.  It should have been enough.  The books had said it would be.

   Evidently, the books lied.

   She’d bet Ren could have built a saber blindfolded.  Luke would have taught him how when he was a boy.

   Asking him was out the question.  She hadn’t heard a word from him in months. 

   That was a good thing.  Wasn’t it?

   If the Resistance was going to survive and thrive, she needed to be able to fight.  She needed a weapon. 

   And some day she might need to train others like her.  How the kriff was she going to do that?

   So involved was Rey with her own gloomy thoughts that for a moment she didn’t realize the hazy blue glow that had formed just outside the light of her campfire was moving.  When she did, she thought at first it was a trick of the moonlight.

   But it wasn’t.  It was a man.

   Leia had explained to her about Force ghosts.  Leia had admitted to having never seen one, nor having wanted to see one.

   Master Skywalker had apparently seen them all the time.  So Rey had wondered…

   “Hello, young Rey,” the Force ghost said to her.

   She sat up straighter and brushed the sand off her lap.  “Uh, hello.”

   She had hoped for a moment that it would be Master Skywalker himself.  Rey had often thought of him since he had passed, wondered if she would see him again.

   This man seemed to be a bit younger than Master Luke, and a bit taller.  His hair and beard were as neatly trimmed as Luke’s had been shaggy and unkempt.  His hair was more red than grey.  

   Rey had no idea of the protocol in such a situation.  When she moved to stand the ghost waved a hand at her.

   “Please, sit.”  He glanced at the parts scattered around her.  “I can see you have been hard at work.”

   “I’m not getting anywhere,” she blurted.  “It’s impossible.”

   She immediately winced at the whine in her voice.

  The ghost just chuckled.  “It is not impossible, young Rey.  Just very difficult.  As intended.”

   “It can’t be that difficult.  Master Luke said children used to build them.”

   “Children who had been raised by the Jedi since birth,” the Force ghost corrected.  “They spent years preparing for the day they would find their own kyber crystal and assemble their own saber under the watchful eye of the saber-master.  Even then it often took several tries to get it right.”

   Rey couldn’t resist.  “How many tries did it take you?”

   The ghost smiled, laugh lines appeared around his blue eyes.  “Four.  Not the fastest in the class, but not the slowest, either.  My master was actually quite proud,” he chuckled.

   She found she quite liked the round tones of his speech, the slightly elongated vowels that sounded a bit like her own.  In fact, his voice seemed…familiar.

   Rey frowned at him, trying to place it.  “Have we met?”

   He sat down across the fire from her.  “Not face to face like this, no.  However, I have spoken to you before.  On Takodana.

   Rey slowly nodded.  “The first time I touched this.”  She gestured to the mangled remains of Luke’s original lightsaber at her knee.

   “Yes.”

   “You’re Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

   “So I am.  It is nice to finally meet you.”

   Rey wasn’t entirely sure what to say.  She settled on, “Nice to meet you, too.”  She couldn’t help but stare at him with a bit of awe.

   Her first Force ghost.  And it was Ben Kenobi.  Her master’s master.  The man for whom Han and Leia had named their son.

   She allowed herself to feel a bit of pride.  She doubted he had ever appeared to Kylo Ren. 

   “Did Master Luke send you?”

   “He did.  He thought I might be of assistance to you.”

   “In building the lightsaber?”

   “In that and in other matters.”

   Rey wasn’t sure what the “other matters” might be.  At the moment, she really didn’t care.

   She pushed forward her latest, failed attempt at a saber.

   “Then, please.  Tell me what I am doing wrong.”

   “Well, the first thing you’re doing wrong is building a lightsaber.”

   She blinked.  “I’m sorry?” 

   She had thought Master Skywalker was cryptic.  Evidently, it wasn’t just him. Evidently, vagueness was a Jedi thing.

   “I don’t understand,” she admitted.

   “A lightsaber isn’t like building a skiff or a sand runner, Rey.  It is not an object at all.  It is a living extension of one’s arm.  A part of one’s body.  The Force flows through you and through it equally.  You have been using your mind to try to build it. You should be using your heart.”

   Rey took this in for a moment.  “I can build something with my heart?”

   “Of course you can.  With the Force, one does not need hands to feel or eyes to see.  In fact, our senses lie to us.  Don’t trust them.”

   Rey had always been a scavenger.  She had always prided herself on what her hands could do.  They were strong, capable hands.  They had helped her survive.  But if something else was called for in this situation, she was willing to learn.

   She closed her eyes, and centered herself as Master Skywalker had taught her.  Soon she could feel the Force around her. 

   Ebbing.  Flowing.  Life.  Death.

   She held out her hands in front of her.

   And she began to create.  

 

 


End file.
